Weiss tubthumps ‘Dish Nation’ at NATPE

Twentieth Television launch show

“Dish Nation” exec producer Stu Weiss and Twentieth Television are using NATPE to promote the upcoming newsmag, and Twentieth programming and development exec veep Stephen Brown said it’s one of the few programs that’s feasible to launch at the conference.

“If we’d gone out with a talkshow, it would have been a terrible experience,” he said. “It’s its own thing, and it kind of sits in a silo.”

Weiss set up the show’s unconventional format partly through his agency, Studio City. The former radio DJ and his producers tape video feed from several morning drive radio shows across the country — a half-hour from each one — and intercut the radio personalities’ riffs on pop culture for segs on current events that run about a minute.

The whole format, he said, is a concession to the fact that the entertainment news lands on Twitter long before it hits “Access Hollywood.”

“The thing about an entertainment news ‘shocker’ is that you read about it three hours ago online, so it’s no longer shocking,” Weiss said. “We just decided we should make it funny.”